Things to Do in County Mayo

More about County Mayo

Where to base yourself

Westport is the default and it earns it: a planned Georgian town built round the Carrowbeg river with the Mall’s lime trees over the water, the best concentration of restaurants and pubs in the county, and Croagh Patrick fifteen minutes down the road. It is also the county’s busiest bed market. Rooms go early for the last weekend in July, when thousands climb the Reek, for the summer festivals and for any decent bank holiday — book well ahead or stay outside town.

If you are here for the coast rather than the county, sleep further out. Mulranny sits at the midpoint of the Greenway looking down Clew Bay and is quieter for half the price. Achill has enough hotels, hostels and self-catering to hold you for a week, though almost everything on the island shuts down between November and March. Belmullet is the base for Erris and the north-west, and you should know before booking that it is a good hour and three-quarters from Westport on slow roads. Ballina suits the Moy and the north coast, and Castlebar is the practical, unglamorous middle.

Mayo distances are longer than the map suggests and the roads are narrow. Two bases beat one if you have a week. Knock Airport puts you within an hour of most of the county if you are flying in.

Clew Bay, the Greenway and the pilgrim mountain

The Great Western Greenway runs 42 km along a railway that closed in 1937, from Westport through Newport and Mulranny to Achill Sound. It is flat, traffic-free and doable in sections; shuttle and bike-hire operators will drop you at one end and collect you at the other, which is how most people ride it. Do the Mulranny–Achill leg if you only want one.

Croagh Patrick starts from the car park at Murrisk, and takes most people three to four hours up and down. The last third is loose scree on a steep cone and is harder coming down than going up — boots and poles, not runners. On a clear day the reward is the whole of Clew Bay and its drumlin islands below you. The Boheh Stone a few miles south is worth the detour: Neolithic rock art on a slab, and twice a year the setting sun appears to roll down the mountain’s flank when viewed from it.

Mountains, bog and empty roads

South-west Mayo is the wildest driving in the county. The R335 from Louisburgh through the Doolough Valley runs between the Sheeffry Hills and Mweelrea with a black lake in the bottom and a stone cross remembering the people who died walking that road in the famine winter of 1849. There is no fuel, no shop and often no signal — fill the tank first. Walkers come here for the Mweelrea horseshoe and the Ben Lugmore ridge above Doo Lough, both serious full days needing map and compass.

North of Clew Bay the country turns to blanket bog. Wild Nephin National Park protects a huge stretch of it and holds a certified dark-sky reserve, so on a clear moonless night the stars here are as good as anywhere in Europe. For an easy taste, the Tóchar Daithí Bán loop from the Ballycroy visitor centre is short and waymarked; at the other extreme the Bangor Trail crosses about 40 km of open bog to Bangor Erris and has a deserved reputation as the roughest waymarked route in Ireland.

North Mayo and the Mullet

The north coast is the part visitors skip and shouldn’t. Downpatrick Head is free and open, with the blowhole roaring in a swell and Dún Briste standing offshore. Nearby, the Céide Fields preserve a Neolithic farming landscape of stone walls under the bog, older than the pyramids — the visitor centre’s opening has been disrupted in recent years, so check before you drive out. Carrowteige gives you cliffs and looped walks with almost nobody on them, and the Stags of Broadhaven sit out to sea off Benwee Head like a row of teeth.

Out on the Mullet, Blacksod is where a lighthouse keeper’s weather reading in June 1944 caused the D-Day landings to be postponed by a day. This is a strong Gaeltacht — you will hear Irish spoken in the shops around Glenamoy and along the coast — and the Áras Inis Gluaire arts centre in Belmullet is the place to check for gigs.

Islands, and what to do when it rains

Ferries to Clare Island and Inishturk leave from Roonagh Pier west of Louisburgh; the Clare Island crossing takes about twenty minutes and the island has Grace O’Malley’s tower house, a beach and enough road for a day’s walking. Sailings are weather-dependent and thin outside summer.

For weather days, the Museum of Country Life at Turlough Park outside Castlebar is the standout — a branch of the National Museum in a Victorian house with free admission, and an easy two hours. Straide has a small museum at Michael Davitt’s birthplace, and Ballina’s Belleek Castle does tours of a genuinely strange collection. In the south, Cong is the reliable half-day: the abbey, the dry canal that never held water, and The Neale down the road, where a land agent’s name became the word “boycott” in 1880.